Reaffirming Affirmative Action

AFFIRMATIVE ACTION is reeling under attacks from the left and the right, but its enemies are not now the ones landing the heaviest blows. Those doing the most damage to affirmative action are misguided supporters, who seize upon justifications that make enemies of those who might otherwise be fellow supporters of preferential treatment on the job and on campus.

Witness a conversation related by Brooklyn College sociology professor William Beer in a recent issue of The New Republic: "A Black student said that 50 million Africans perished in slavery. 'My great grandfather was a slave. You OWE me!' To which a Jewish student's answer was, 'My great grandfather was in a Polish ghetto when yours was a slave. I don't owe you ANYTHING! [Beer's capitals]"

Arguments such as the one related here ensure that affirmative action will gain a host of unnecessary enemies. Beer observes, "It cannot be reconciled with the fact that many of our students's ancestors were not even in the United States when Black Americans suffered from slavery and institutionalized discrimination. How can the sons and daughters of immigrants from Sicily, where feudalism and the Mafia ruled well into the 20th century, be persuaded that they must pay for the sins of now-dead white Americans?"

The consequences for affirmative action from its supporters's claims are unwittingly revealed by Beer, who concludes largely from examining this weak foundation that affirmative action should be demolished in favor of a fresh start.

The sociologist does not consider that it is not affirmative action which is flawed, but rather the rationale provided by some of its supporters. The Jewish student and Beer are right in rejecting any notion that the current generation of white Americans have a responsibility to repay Black Americans for past injustices. Even those Americans whose forefathers were in the United States during Jim Crow and slavery cannot be held accountable for the discrimination of their ancestors, in which they played no part.

YET THE ARGUMENT'S weakness should not be allowed to undermine the need for of benefits from affirmative action. Affirmative action in education holds out a promise of considerable value: not to repay past ills, but to build a faith in education in the Black community, without which any lasting economic advancement is impossible.

No better example of the tangible benefit from veneration for education can be found than in the Jewish community in America. Beer points out the similarity in the two group's American backgrounds: "Both Jews and Black Americans came from impoverished and backward ghettos. Both were subject to severe legal and informal harassment for centuries, not to mention periodic slaughter.... Some find it incredible that Jews come from a background similar to theirs."

But Beer leaves unanswered the questions of why one group arose from the ghettos to prominence the professions and earn 170 percent of the national average per capita, while the other earns about two-thirds the average and has a third of its number below the poverty line.

A major part of the credit for Jewish economic success must be given to the Jewish culture. Thomas Sowell says in Economics and Race, education always held a prominent and respected place in Jewish society. Jewish immigrants seized upon every opportunity for free education, using the likes of City College and Brooklyn College itself to gain the education that allowed them to move from the ghetto into the highest ranks of society. Where direct aid from the federal government generally met with failure, education succeeded.

At the moment, as Sowell observes, there is not such regard for education in the Black community. Edward R. Murray, in Losing Ground, claims that many inner-city Blacks have a justified lack of faith in education, having few, if any, positive proofs of its value in overcoming discrimination and poverty, whose power is apparent.

Affirmative action can give members of this community a chance to experience the benefits of higher education, which would otherwise be denied them because of SAT scores inferior to those of students from more affluent backgrounds.

Such people will surely pass on their own acquired regard for education to their children, friends and neighbors. Even if such people leave the ghetto and join the middle class, even those with whom they no longer have social contact can see the evidence of education's power to lift one of their peers out out of the "underclass."

A diffusion of respect in the Black community is the first and most important step toward improving the public school system, which in turn is a mighty hope for ending the cycle of poverty plaguing Blacks and effecting a lasting change in their economic position.

The widespread student violence and truancy (42 percent in New York) plaguing public schools cannot be eradicated without a change in the students' attitudes toward education. Those who claim that affirmative action programs detract attention from the greater goal of rebuilding the public school system do not see that the two go hand in hand.

If affirmative action fulfills its promise, the public schools may improve to the degree that affirmative action will no longer be necessary. Until then, its interim value is clear, and its true basis is so far apart from the idea of atonement that many of its present enemies might be forced to reconsider their present opposition.